Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City situated primarily on the island of the same name. It is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay. With a population of about 477,377, Staten Island is the least populated of the five boroughs but is the third largest in area at .

The Borough of Staten Island is coterminous with Richmond County, the southernmost county in the state of New York. Until 1975, the borough was officially named the Borough of Richmond. Staten Island has been sometimes called "the forgotten borough" by inhabitants who feel neglected by the city government.

Staten Island is overall the most suburban of the five boroughs of New York City. The North Shore, especially the neighborhoods of St. George, Tompkinsville, Park Hill, and Stapleton, is the most urban part of the island; it contains the officially designated St. George Historic District and The St. Paul's Avenue-Stapleton Heights Historic District, which feature large Victorian homes. The South Shore has more suburban-style residential neighborhoods and is home to the two and one-half mile long F.D.R. Boardwalk, the fourth longest in the world. Historically, the central and southern sections of the island were once dominated by dairy and poultry farms, almost all of which disappeared in the 20th century.

The borough is accessible to Brooklyn via the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to New Jersey via the Goethals Bridge, Outerbridge Crossing, and Bayonne Bridge. Staten Island has Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) bus service and an MTA rapid transit line, the Staten Island Railway, which runs from the ferry terminal at St. George to Tottenville. The free Staten Island Ferry connects the borough to Manhattan and is a popular tourist attraction, providing views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and lower Manhattan.

History

Geographically, Staten Island was formed in the wake of the last ice age. In the late Pleistocene between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago, the ice sheet that covered northeastern North America reached as far south as present day New York City, to a depth of approximately the same height as the Empire State Building. At one point, during its maximum reach, the ice sheet precisely ended at the center of present day Staten Island, forming a terminal moraine on the existing diabase sill. The central moraine of the island is sometimes called the Serpentine ridge because it contains large amounts of that particular mineral.

As in much of North America, human habitation appeared in the island fairly rapidly after the retreat of the ice sheet. Archaeologists have recovered tool evidence of Clovis culture activity dating from approximately 14,000 years ago. The island was probably abandoned later, possibly because of the extinction of large mammals on the island. Evidence of the first permanent American Indian settlements and agriculture are thought to date from about 5,000 years ago (Jackson, 1995), although early archaic habitation evidence has been found in multiple locations on the island (Ritchie 1963)